My godless Facebook friend is dying.

She was in a 9-day induced coma and her family ignored the DNR paperwork.

She has pain and blood flow issues in her legs.

It's that blood cancer white cell/red cell production dealy snafu I can never remember the name of.

Earlier last year when she started to experience more ups and downs.... in the middle of the chat, she wrote, "I don't want to die."

Our interactions are a surreal mix of the trivial and the profound. Just like normal, except for the fact that she's now living on borrowed time.

Believer friends I tell pray for her, and offer prognostications of, "She'll be alright, I just know it."

We would always text each other on a delayed schedule anyway, but now when I see she's made her Words With Friends play, or any "proof of life," my heart soars.

We've also had mutual friends just drop dead essentially, so it's never been one-size-fits-all as far as dealing with mortality.

She's a truly wonderful rationalist, and we've often acknowledged that our overriding concern and empathy is that children are spared the brutal realities of life as much as possible. But understanding that at least when one becomes an adult, even a young one, there's the comprehension of the tragic nature life itself entails, along with the joys.

She's my age (60's) and has been varying degrees of sick through most of it. If it was a pet, you'd console yourself that it wasn't a bad run overall and it included much love. Though valid for people as well, the sting seems less easily assuaged by such notions, particularly contemplating it with her, still being here and all.

Not looking for any comfort or sympathy, just sharing a reminder that we're each of us pretty awesome people, able to face life on its own terms.

"Everything will be alright in the end, so if it is not alright, it is not the end.”